Day in photos: Dec. 17, 2012

Santa Claus (actually it’s ski teacher Alberto Ronchi) catches some air over the resort town of Madonna di Campiglio in northern Italy’s Dolomites.

Reuters

Destruction sits in the wake of a car bombing in the Pakistani town of Jamrud. Seventeen people were killed when the bomb exploded near a bus stop outside a local market.

AFP/Getty Images

A Palestinian resident of the West Bank village of Madama argues with an Israeli soldier tasked with intervening in clashes between Palestinian farmers and Israeli settlers.

AFP/Getty Images

Gong Shulin finishes a swim in the freezing waters of the Song Hua River in Harbin city, China. More than 500 winter swimmers belonging to a local club take a dip daily, believing the exercise is good for their health.

EPA

FDNY firefighters battle a three-alarm fire at a junkyard on Tuckerton Street in Queens.

Dennis Clark

A trumpeter plays from the Old Town tower over a traditional Christmas market in Prague’s Old Town Square.

AFP/Getty Images

Indonesia’s Mount Lokon, which has erupted 800 times since July, spews volcanic ash during another eruption.

Reuters

A Georgian orthodox priest unceremoniously dunks one of about 900 babies welcomed to the faith at a mass baptism in Tbilisi, Georgia.

EPA

Bahraini civil rights activist Seyyed Yousif al-Muhafda is surrounded by police as they storm a market in Manama. Al-Muhafda was one of at least six opposition supporters nabbed.

EPA

A city engineer monitors the seawall in Vancouver’s Stanley Park for damage as high tides and strong winds from a winter storm battered the Canadian city’s shores.

Reuters

A woman hawks figurines from her stand at a Christmas market in Nantes, France.

AFP/Getty Images

Just some of about 20,000 “wishing spheres” float along the Singapore River carrying New Year wishes of people all over the country.